BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > RAPID BEEYARD GROWTH
how many is too many?
pdmattox:
How does one know the maximum amount of hives to put in a bee yard at one time?
Michael Bush:
That depends on the forage and the climate. Here, on general farm land the general rule is about 25 hives. You can put more, but they won't make more honey.
Finsky:
--- Quote from: pdmattox on December 29, 2006, 07:09:16 pm ---How does one know the maximum amount of hives to put in a bee yard at one time?
--- End quote ---
An of course it depends how much there are hives without your hives.
I use 1-4 hives in one site. Then another blok at 1-2 mile's distance Earlier I used 10 . Now my yield jumped 80% when I dopped my hive number.
Canola field may tolerate even 50 hives in one site but after 2 weeks the bloom is away. I set my hives agording the minimum pastures. So bees have all the time good pastures. If it is hot weather, I may say that canola is not worth more than one hive even if you have 50 hectares canola.
I have noticed that differencies in yields between sites may be 3-5 fold. That is a big challenge to choose sites we bees get heavy loads from nearby area. People think that the amount of honey depends on how good is the hive. But the biggest reason is how much flowers have nectar and how fast bees get the full load.
Every one must learn that on his own area. This has been to me the most diffucult in beekeeping.
Brian D. Bray:
As Finsky rightly points out the main factor of yield is number of bees to crop ration in a given area--the more bees the less yield per hive. The second factor is number of available foragers. The stronger hives have the edge in crowded area due to the number of bees available to forage. When looking for sights to place bees look for areas where visiable hives are few to none. If the forage is good and the hive is strong you can expect good yields. In optimum circumstances you can get 300 lbs of honey per hive. The less forage, the more bees, the weaker the hive, all reduce the yield downward.
Kirk-o:
Finski is Pretty sharp on this stuff he has to get the Maximum in a small amount of time haveing read alot of his stuff he is successful on this subject
kirko
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